I Found You by Lisa Jewell

Happy Friday! Today I'm a stop on the TLC blog tour for Lisa Jewell's latest, I Found You.

Note there is a tour wide giveaway on this one, so be sure to read through to the end for the Rafflecopter!

The man had been sitting on the beach all day. Just sitting. By the time it starts raining, Alice figures it's time to step in. She offers him tea and a coat and later, when he's still there, she gives him a place to stay. At first, she's concerned. Inviting a strange man to stay in her house, even if it is actually a detached shed, isn't the best idea. Especially for a single mom with three kids to care for. But the man has no apparent memory of who he is or how he got to Alice's beach and she wants to help if she can.

At the same time, newly married Lily knows the instant her husband doesn't arrive home from work that something is very wrong. But when she reports him missing, the police all but brush her off. Until they discover his passport is a fake and there are no records of the man. 

I love Lisa Jewell. I mean, already knew this - The Girls in the Garden kind of blew me away. But she's done it again, which means I REALLY love Lisa Jewell!

So we begin with a man with no memory and a single mom whose story hints at something potentially dark. Her kids give her the side eye when she invites this man home, understandably, but her friend issues cryptic warnings about not letting the school find out!?

Then we meet young Lily. Twenty-one and living in a foreign country, in a new home in an all but empty neighborhood, with no job, no money, and no connections to anyone. And even though she believes her husband loves her and would never leave her, the police definitely think otherwise. But it's the discovery that his identity is fake that floors her and propels an actual investigation.

And there's a third storyline as well. In 1993, a family with two teenaged children is on their annual beach vacation. Gray, seventeen, is suspicious of a nineteen-year-old man they all meet while at the beach one day. To Gray, the man's attention on Gray's fifteen-year-old sister, Kirsty, is suspect.

The story weaves back and forth between these three storylines as each becomes more and more deeply imbued with a sort of sinister ambiance. And of course, I tried to theorize on my own about where the story was heading and was pretty wrong at every turn! Which made it even more deliciously fun!

Jewell excels at building tension packed, but at times quite quiet, stories with characters that are never quite what they seem. The deliberate pacing and careful doling out of clues serve to make the story that much more intense and addictively readable.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here.

For more on Lisa Jewell and her work you can visit her website here. You can also like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter.

Purchase Links: Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble